7 Worst DC Comics Event Comics That Should Have Been Great

DC Comics has put out some of the finest events of all time. Marvel created the modern event comic, but an argument can be made that Crisis on Infinite Earths perfected it. Event stories started to become a major part of the publishing schedule of the Big Two, allowing them to make wholesale changes to their line. Over the years, DC events have been used in a variety of ways to “fix” the publisher and some of them have been wildly successful. However, not every story was able to rise to the occasion. Some events swung for the fences and ended up hitting a foul, which is something of a tragedy since some of them should have actually been good.

These events had all the potential in the world, but there are numerous problems with them. They did their best, but failed for a variety of reasons, scraping the bottom of the event barrel. These seven DC events should have been great, but ended up failing.

7) Zero Hour: Crisis in Time

Crisis on Infinite Earths wasn’t perfect, and there were still problems with continuity even a decade later and the publisher decided to fix that. Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time, by Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway, saw new villain Extant attack the universe just as time goes crazy, with alternate universe versions of heroes and villains appearing all over the planet. This story had a great creative team, cool ideas, and really great tie-ins (Alpha Centurion fans rise up!), but it ended up not really working. The changes it made to the Justice Society, Hawkman, and Doctor Fate were disastrous and it’s gone down as a bad event.

6) Flashpoint

The New 52 was a huge failure, and we should have known it would be after Flashpoint, by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert. This five-issue story should have been House of M done right, but the tale depended on tie-ins to flesh its universe out rather than the main series. What most fans who weren’t around back then don’t know is that this story wasn’t supposed to go this way; it’s original tease showed something very different than what we’d eventually get. It was changed by Dan DiDio at the last minute, which is why it’s so short and unsatisfying in a lot of ways. This story should have been longer, but it also never was supposed to go in this direction and would have better if it didn’t.

5) Convergence

Convergence, by Jeff King, Scott Lobdell, Dan Jurgens, Ethan Van Sciver, Carlo Pagulayan, Stephen Segovia, Andy Kubert, Ed Benes, Eduardo Pansica, and Aaron Lopresti, should have been a success. It was a classic DC multiverse story, and had some brilliant tie-ins. However, it was an example of too many cooks in the kitchen. While there are some great talents on this book, they never really come together and one gets the impression that the cadre of high level artists was deployed to cover up for the somewhat blah story. This one could have changed the course of the New 52, but it died a terrible death.

4) Armageddon 2001

Armageddon 2001 is one of DC’s greatest failures that shouldn’t have happened. The story followed time traveler Waverider going back in time to stop the Monarch from taking over the world, showing the heroes of the present their future to spur them to stop it. Most of the story took place in annuals and with a two-issue miniseries by Archie Goodwin, Denny O’Neil, and Dan Jurgens. It’s a sound story, but the problem comes that the identity of the Monarch was leaked before the story ended. This forced the publisher to change the whole thing quickly, forcing them to ignore clues built into the tale to give readers a twist ending they had planned on. The changes destroyed the story, taking something that could have been enjoyable and ruining it.

3) Identity Crisis

Identity Crisis, by Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales, should have been brilliant. The murder mystery introduced the idea of the Justice League mindwipes, with members of the team secretly wiping villains’ memories of their identities, something insured to have major repercussions. That’s a cool idea, but the story revealed this by sexually assaulting and killing fan favorite Sue Dibny. The story was meant to be controversial and it definitely grabbed attention but it has aged like milk. It’s a shame, too, because its aftermath was pretty great and the Justice League mindwipes remain one of the coolest ideas in the history of the team.

2) Heroes in Crisis

Tom King is a controversial writer, and Heroes in Crisis is a huge reason why. The story teamed King with Clay Mann and Mitch Gerads for a murder mystery at Sanctuary, a place where superheroes went to learn to deal with their trauma. However, the mystery itself is terrible and was welded to an actual good idea – a place where superheroes processed their insane lives. In fact, the story was first announced as a tale that was more about that sort of thing than a murder mystery. Mann and Gerads are amazing artists, and King usually does psychological superhero tales well, so this one should have at least been something that King’s fans like. However, this one failed at that for a variety of reasons and it didn’t really have to.

1) Amazons Attack!

Wonder Woman is one of DC’s most formidable heroes, and her corner of the DC Universe is ripe for event stories. However, we’ve mostly gotten bad Wonder Woman-centered events and the worst of them is Amazons Attack!, by Will Pfeiffer and Pete Woods. This story saw the Amazons attack Man’s World after Diana is imprisoned, and plays into the build-up to Final Crisis. However, this story was basically a perfect storm of terrible. It was so bad it was memeworthy (look up “Bees. My God.”), but it didn’t have to be like this. DC was in an amazing place when this story dropped, so it should have been better.

What DC event do you think could have been awesome? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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